Unheeding the voice’s confusion, the Chairman continued.

“We’ll first focus on the Material Prime Elements first: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light and Darkness. As you all know, everything material in the World are made of these six elements. Even your bodies are made fully of these elements. The heat of your limbs symbolize fire, the blood in your veins symbolize water, the bones in your body symbolize earth, the lungs in your body symbolize air. The spheres which are your eyes are the only organ capable of observing the beauty of light, so the rest of your organs won’t desire to have the deadly magnificence of sunlight shining on them directly.

<No-no-no. Don’t listen to this, Evin. And don’t even dare to think that any of this pseudoscience would be useful for you,> the voice finally made up its mind about the contents of the speech and quickly turned protective of Evin, almost fearing that these words would bring harm to him.

<Why do you say so?> Evin questioned.

<He speaks of old knowledge. Not old as in ancient and grand; old as in outdated and useless,> it decreed. It fell into mumbles for a bit, ones that Evin started to notice after he learned how to create telepathic connections with the voice. <No wonder Decatur made such a poor show of magic the other day. I was quite confused at the time, wondering if this was the best of noble society, or if Decatur was just a glaring failure… It seems that the problem lay in the basis of his knowledge.>

Evin remembered the brilliant flames that Decatur willed into existence, and couldn’t help but wonder what the voice would deem a success. Well, Evin knew it had the right to call others failures, as Evin was first witness to the miracles it could create.

<But it does show that Imagination Casting will work out for a mage, if they’re hundred percent sure of what they’re doing to be right,> the voice fell into thought again. <Such a lax system of magics… it has four different methods of casting spells, and not only that, it allows for mistakes, as long as the mage is convinced that they’re correct. It’s almost as if it was designed to allow anyone and everyone to dabble in magics, with the only requirement being that one possess a mana-core. It’s so unbelievably cheap for the power it provides.>

<Shouldn’t there be a price to be paid for these feats of magic? Or am I just being old and grumpy?> the voice snarled. <No matter. I wished I didn’t have to teach you sciences myself if I could help it, but I suppose it’s inevitable.>

Evin listened to the rest of the lecture with an attitude of not ridicule, but skepticism. It wasn’t a hard attitude to take, with the voice offering a variety of counterarguments to the Chairman’s teachings.

But as it was doing this, it shared with Evin its calmness and some of its ability, so Evin wouldn’t give away the fact that he possessed deeper knowledge in his head. If others paid attention to him, they would find a boy acting calm, just so he could hide the excitement he was keeping inside. ‘A childish trait, but a natural one,’ the voice explained.

Evin didn’t know whether or not the Chairman was fooled by this act, as the man continued to speak of the elements, seemingly not caring about the thoughts and reactions of the students.

He spoke long about the subject before giving everyone a book of puzzles and other various mind games, explaining that mental exercises were the best path of training one’s Imagination Casting. Evin glanced through the book with the same skepticism, but the voice agreed with the Chairman on this point. It warned Evin that it would not help him in solving these puzzles, reminding Evin of his occasional slowness.

The next class was also one that the Chairman taught – Natural Sciences. This one was only taught to commoners, so thankfully, Evin could bid farewell to the penetrating gazes of the nobles for the time being. But it still seemed a rather unpopular class, as the total number of students only reached ten in total.

The contents of the first lecture were practically the same as what the man taught in the first lecture of Imagination Casting. Except, of course, the parts about using World energies to cast spells using this knowledge.

Instead, he spoke deeper about the elements: their roles in plants, animals, and even the creation of the World. Evin could tell that the man really cared about teaching about this subject to these commoners. Perhaps this was his way of bridging the gap between the two social classes.

But learning the same thing two times did not sit well with Evin. Moreover, the voice had thoroughly convinced him that both instances of this same thing was practically useless to learn about, so Evin resolved to speak with the Chairman and be released of Natural Sciences, at least.

After the class was finished, he walked up to the Chairman, but had to wait for another student to finish speaking with him.

<It’s impressive how people are able to create whole entire sub-sciences out of baseless speculations,> the voice chuckled as Evin waited for the Chairman. <I suppose it’s wrong of me to call them baseless as one could cast magic with them. He-he, it’s like someone using their orifice to transport water – they’d hold the liquid in their mouths and spit it out when they’ve reached their destination! Sounds stupid, not to mention disgusting to me, but to each their own, I suppose. Ha-ha-ha!>

The voice sounded angry at the beginnings of the Chairman’s lessons, but halfway through the first lecture, it returned to its cynicisms and sarcasms.

Evin saw that the Chairman was finished with the previous student and shoving down a sigh, he walked over to the man. He realized much too late that he should’ve been thinking of polite words to refuse the man’s teachings.

“What did you want to talk about?” the Chairman asked.

“I… I wanted to be freed of the class about Science,” Evin fumbled.

“Hmm… You seemed unimpressed today…” the Chairman noted.

Evin was under the impression that he acted well today, so the statement caught him off guard. It took him his all to keep himself calm as he urgently sent a distress signal to the voice.

<Just tell him some random half-truth,> it ordered. <You can’t have me handpick your words for you all the time, now can you?>

Evin thought for a bit, before answering with what he thought appropriate.

“I feel it’s detrimental to me.”

“Detrimental?” the Chairman seemed surprised.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Would it negatively affect your casting?”

“I don’t think it will, but I feel it wouldn’t help either.”

The Chairman stood pondering, no doubt wondering if Evin was just lying to slip out of a class he didn’t like. After observing him for a bit, he made up his opinion.

“If you think so, then I won’t force you to learn under me. You won’t have to attend Natural Sciences from now on… But I can’t so easily relieve of you Imagination Casting as well.”

“Alright.”

Evin didn’t protest, as the voice explained what kind of effect him leaving the class after a single lecture would have. It would be a giant slap to the Chairman’s face, who most likely pulled countless strings to put Evin there; and it would also be a discouragement for every other commoner thinking of studying Imagination Casting.

“Okay, with that out of the way, let’s go to the next class, shall we?”

Evin’s next class was Combat Training, and the teacher would be Vice-Chair Bokh, if Evin wasn’t remembering wrongly.

“You’re also going to be teaching us the class?”

“No, I’ll just attend it as an observer for the time being,” the Chairman smiled.

The two walked over to a more contained area of the Arena, chatting about idle things on the way. The Chairman as always, was in his friendly and lively mood, and soon enough, Evin stopped trying to see hidden meanings attached to the man’s words.

At their destination, most of the nobles were already there, fussing around Decatur as always. Evin couldn’t tell what they were saying exactly, because of the distance and the general noise, but he could make some guessed. Bella, the girl who was sitting behind Evin, was speaking softly with the Vice-chair, most likely talking about a spell of some sorts, judging by the occasional sparks of mana.

Evin could also see Arza and Lopar standing on the sidelines, as well as some other students of commoner, but mage origins. Evin said his pleasantries to the Chairman and walked up to Arza.

“So? How was your class with the nobles?” the boy asked, grinning from cheek to cheek.

—–